Institute for Canadian Values ad ran two days after National Post issued apology for it

The Toronto Sun will not apologize for running an ad in its Oct 2 edition that activists have called transphobic.

The ad, from the Institute for Canadian Values, is a slightly modified version of a full-page ad that ran in the National Post on Sept 24 and Sept 28. Following a social media outcry, the National Post issued an apology and stated that the proceeds from the ad sale would be donated to a queer charitable organization.

Under a picture of a young girl, the ad reads, “Please! Don’t confuse me. I’m a girl. Don’t teach me to question if I’m a boy, transsexual, transgendered, intersexed, or two spirited [sic].”

The ad calls on the leaders of the three major Ontario parties competing in the Oct 6 election to “please tell me you will stop teachers from confusing me.”

Sun publisher Mike Power says that the newspaper has received “a few” complaints about the ad and that he is aware of the outcry the ad has generated online.

“We feel that they’ve made their point and we’ve chosen not to run it again,” Power says.

He declined to explain why the Sun has chosen not to run the ad again but did say that the paper will not be issuing any apology or statement on the matter.

The final week of the Ontario election campaign has featured Progressive Conservative flyer and mail-out campaigns with similar erroneous and misleading statements in several Greater Toronto Area ridings.

The Liberals claim that a PC candidate in Willowdale, Vince Agovino, included the ICV ad in a mail-out he sent to homes in Willowdale.

Comments

Yes Sun media is mostly scum on how they do things and who they support.

As for Toronto being full of red necks, that's kind of ignorant statement. Had it not been for the GTA Ontario would have a PC government right now. Ford aside Toronto had started to become an amazing place which supported many minority cultures and events. Including those within the greater queer community.
Show me the queer community centre, full health centres etc in East Calgary. Explain to me why so many queers aren't as open in Calgary as they are in Toronto.

David Miller, Barbra Hall, June Rollins.
No I guess I don't see the pattern.

in this day and age i can not believe that people in power continue to be so ignorant. If you are a believer in religion and beleive that all babys should live, then we will always have positive gay transgender and transexual role models in our society and we whole should embrass had to go to the back of the bus. SHAME ON ALL OF YOU.
I woiuld demand that my eight year old son be educated about this.

to dump on the cultural/spiritual beliefs of the First Nations people is it?

if someone were to put out an add 'don't confuse me! I am a (insert religions here) don't make me think i'm a christian, buddhist, muslim, jew...' there'd be a big uproar, but poo-pooing some First Nation's cultural concept is just all fine and dandy.

That's really where this add gets disgusting, the casual ignorance it has for everything that doesn't fit into it's narrow worldview.

I read the .pdf about the new curriculum on the website of the ad creators and saw NO indication of sexual identity instruction given until grade 8. The ad is lying to us by omission. Question everything!

Complain to the Toronto Sun, but also complain to Advertising Standards Canada (see link below). I also wonder if a complaint to the police is possible. ..... ..... BAYARD RUSTIN: The job of the gay community is not to deal with extremists who would castigate us or put us on an island and drop an H-bomb on us. The fact of the matter is that there is a small percentage of people in America who understand the true nature of the homosexual community. There is another small percentage who will never understand us. Our job is not to get those people who dislike us to love us. Nor was our aim in the civil rights movement to get prejudiced white people to love us. Our aim was to try to create the kind of America, legislatively, morally, and psychologically, such that even though some whites continued to hate us, they could not openly manifest that hate. Thats our job today: to control the extent to which people can publicly manifest antigay sentiment. ....